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Voter tests.

Those of you who've noticed my rambling comments at Left2Right or Majikthise probably expected a post on this topic would appear here eventually.  There's very little new here, so I'll put most of this post below the fold.  Click on if you dare... 

Another quotation from the Mencken book I got for Christmas:

"...the essential objection to feudalism (the perfect antithesis to democracy) was that it imposed degrading acts and attitudes upon the vassal; the essential objection to democracy is that, with few exceptions, it imposes degrading acts and attitudes upon the men responsible for the welfare and dignity of the state.  The former was compelled to do homage to his suzerain, who was very apt to be a brute and an ignoramous.  The latter are compelled to do homage to their constituents, who in overwhelming majority are certain to be both" (p165-7).

I think this is at least as true today as it was in Mencken's day.  As Don Herzog explains in this post, a good chunk of the voting public is "clueless about basic political facts."  Such widespread ignorance and unconcern among voters produces suboptimal leaders and suboptimal policies.  And, as I argued in the comments to Herzog's post, there is reason to think the widespread ignorance of the majority is here for the long-term.  We cannot, and should not, force people to know more or think harder about politics, and they've given us no reason to expect them to do so of their own accord.  Ralph Nader's idea of getting people to think about politics as interestedly as they presently do about sports is, I think, pure fantasy.   

If we can't make the average voter better informed, what can we do to solve the problem of voter ignorance?  I like the idea of a "voter test" -- a test potential voters must take, and pass, before being allowed into the voting booth.  I'll make only two very minor points about voter tests here, and leave a fuller discussion for another time.

1. An objection against voter tests: There is a notion that "everyone has a right to vote," and voter tests would seem to violate that right.  My response: First of all, it is simply untrue to say that everyone has a right to vote; apparently 12-year-olds, for instance, don't have that right.  More importantly, unlike a law against underage voting, voter tests would not actually prevent anyone from voting; they would only prevent people from voting in ignorance of basic political facts.  Given voter tests, everyone presently allowed to vote would still be allowed to do so, if only they are willing to familiarize themselves with the politicians and policies they're voting on.  This requirement seems eminently reasonable to me; I think most of us would agree that some degree of political awareness is the responsibility of every voter.  Which brings me to the next point:

2. An advantage of voter tests: Like littering, ill-informed voting harms everyone when it becomes widespread.  As a consequence, each voter has a civic duty -- a duty to her fellow citizens -- to make an informed, reasoned decision before stepping into the voting booth.  During campaign seasons, the media (who are usually busy encouraging people to "rock the vote") usually do not emphasize this obligation.  Nevertheless, I think we all quite clearly do have this obligation.  Voter tests, therefore, have the advantage of directly requiring people to fulfill an obligation they are presently left free to ignore.

01/03/2005 |

Comments

Richard

"my rambling comments at Left2Right"
Oh - so that was *you*! Very nice. I've previously posted on much the same idea, actually:
http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2004/09/illiberal-democracy.html

Posted by: Richard | 01/03/2005 at 08:48 PM

david

Richard-
Great minds think alike! Your post is better than mine, though.

Posted by: david | 01/04/2005 at 03:25 AM

Richard

Nah, I just quoted other people who were better yet! ;)

Posted by: Richard | 01/04/2005 at 05:00 AM

Egarwaen

The problem is "what are basic political facts?" If by that you mean facts about what the candidates claim that they want to do, then your test doesn't do much - it still requires no critical thinking skills on the part of the voter, and merely limits those who can get into the voting booth to those who have bought one candidate or another's lies.

If by that you mean the truth about a candidate's positions and (if an incumbent) recent policy, we're not much better off. The Bush administration, to pull an example completely out of thin air, would no doubt object loudly to any test that did not require the voter to acknowledge that the war in Iraq was an unquestionable success that discovered WMDs and brought peace to the middle east; the campaign of any reasonable challenger (or for that matter, any reasonable person) would demand exactly the opposite. The problem is, as it often is, determining who are the reasonable persons.

If by "basic political facts" you mean a civics test... Well, even there, we run into problems. The Christian Nation whackjobs, for example, are constantly trying to convince the world that the lines in the Constitution of the United States mandating separation of Church and state do not, in fact, exist. Modern Republicans in general seem to wish that they could do away with the checks and balances of power, through rhetoric like "activist judges". There's a reason they've spent the last thirty years dismantling civics classes in public education.

In short, while this is an attractive theoretical idea, I believe it to be infeasible unless there is some omnipotent source of absolutely factual information... In which case, why bother with democracy at all?

Posted by: Egarwaen | 01/04/2005 at 12:26 PM

Jacqueline

Yeah, the problem is the voter test would be manipulated by whoever was in charge to favor their allies and discriminate against their enemies.

I think it would be better to have a requirement that only net taxpayers (people who paid more in taxes then they received in government benefits or salaries) can vote -- a "pay to play" system. You'd get a more informed voting public as a side effect of that policy.

Posted by: Jacqueline | 01/04/2005 at 11:44 PM

david

Jacqueline--
By some ways of accounting, that disqualify almost all the voters in the south and midwest!

Posted by: david | 01/05/2005 at 02:53 AM

Jacqueline

Damn red staters :)

Posted by: Jacqueline | 01/10/2005 at 12:35 AM

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